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EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

Hello there!

After the summer break, I am honored to present what the new content will be about!

But first, let me introduce myself as it is my very first time to write in the official forums instead of just lurking here.
I am Ogele, a content designer from Germany, who joined around the time of the release of Leviathan, and as such I got directly thrown into a lot of script bug fixing. Prior to joining, I was (and still am) a modder for EU4 - the one or other might know me already as Comrade Flan on Steam. Oh, and if somebody wants to complain about the bugfix of Fars' color: that was me - so to all the fans of Yellow Fars, I am sorry for your loss.

With that said, it's time to move to the actually exciting new stuff for the new Content Pack which will be focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today I start with the presentation of one of the famous realms of Africa - Mali
dd_mali.png

Before diving into the mission tree I want to say that this is all still work in progress. As such, everything still is subject to change.

Mali is a realm which has outlived its time of glory, and is spiraling into irrelevance during the timeframe of EU4. Starting prior to 1444 with the death of Mansa Suleyman Keita, the brother of the famous Mansa Musa, Mali has been facing civil wars and poor leadership. As such, Mali has not a good time starting in the game as they will have to face the Disaster Decline of Mali.

dd_mali_disaster.png
dd_mali_disaster_event.png

Icon and event picture are not final.

While the modifiers themselves are not the end of the world, Mali will have to face a series of events:
dd_mali_disaster_monthly_events.png

There are a few more disaster related events, but I think these will suffice.

Now the question is: how do you end this disaster? Well, the mission tree has the solution

dd_mali_mission_tree.png


The mission tree is split into three parts: Reconquest of your former borders, dealing with the Disaster and a little bit of colonization. The most right side of the tree is the one you will focus the most in the early game as its rewards remove some of the disaster events, making the Decline much more bearable. They will remove the Pretender rebels spawning on every new monarch, make the estates loyal for your cause and remove the estate rebellions and will finally ensure that provinces, which are core of other nations, remain loyal to you instead of revolting. At the same time, the missions in the middle part will push you into conquering former territory back, giving permanent claims over Macina, Jenné, Timbuktu and Songhai. An additional bonus of the missions is that each conquest of a new territory will grant you +1 Stability as long you have the disaster active. Also, while you conquer after your heart's desire you will fire these events through the mission tree:

dd_mali_jnn.png
dd_mali_capital.png
dd_mali_son.png


With the Restore the Empire mission you can finally retake your status as an Empire, and if you also finish the mission Handle the Kaabu you can finally put an end to the Decline as you have clearly proven that Mali has recovered from the disaster. Restore Mali Authority will end the disaster and gives you -15% Stability cost and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy. After dealing with the disaster, it is time to step into Mansa Musa's footsteps and try to outperform his generosity. But first you will need to get the income for that, and because of that the missions following handling the inner troubles will focus on developing the main sources of income, which are Gold and Ivory. Completing the mission Gold and Ivory will allow you to use a brand new estate privilege and will fire an event, which is beneficial for every owner of ivory provinces:

dd_mali_estate.png
dd_mali_ivory.png


Now that the gold question has been solved you can now relive the history and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. By ensuring that the owners of Ankara, Kairo and Mecca have the "Sent Gift" opinion modifier, you can complete the mission Show Generosity and get an event which allows you to invest into Mecca, either adding a Great Mosque and making your own Ulema happy or adding a Counting House and making your own Dhimmi happy.

Finally, it wouldn't be a Mansa Musa experience if you don't crash the economy of a whole country. With the final mission Dominate Europe's Trade, which requires you to have a strong trade presence in either of the European trade nodes and having 15,000 Ducats without any loan will, you can unleash the sheer amount of gold you have hoarded upon Europe!

dd_mali_dear_god_have_mercy_upon_your_soul.png


If you wonder what the result will look like... well... here you go. Poor Genoa will never financially recover from this

dd_mali_oof.png

While I am at it: I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy.

Now to some other smaller highlights for Mali:
  • The colonization missions are based on the legend of Abu Bakr. Because we didn't find many evidences for the existence of his journey to the new world, these missions will describe him more as a legend then as a discrete fact. The missions will revolve about travelling west and founding an own colony in South America
  • The mission Connection to Maghreb enables a decision which allows you to purchase a province in Europe for 2000 Ducats. You have a choice of 5 provinces here, which are all near Italy or Iberia
  • The mission Choose Direction will enable a mission which is either focused on converting your land or on tolerating the traditions
That's all for today! There are a lot more things I would love to talk about, but I think I am stretching that dev diary more than enough already. With that said, next week we will take a closer look at Songhai. Until then, have a nice week!
 
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I commend* the attention, much needed attention to Africa. But forcing people to do a mission tree to remove a disaster is.... VERY railroaded.
You are essentially removing the option to play the nation in any other way than exactly what the mission tree says or suffer the disaster as punishment for the whole rest of the game. Perhaps make it only last until the end of the 1st age or something. Not forever.
 
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Hmm Interesting.


While agree with the sentiment, I do think that some continents and regions could use and additional one or two provinces.

Overall, this looks pretty good. Somethings of note, the inflation event should target not just people with capitals in Europe, but also anyone who has a positive opinion of Mali. It doesn't make sense if I've rivalled France and they take a "gift" from me.

Beyond that and the grammatical error below, this is pretty good. I really hope Ethopia gets a serious mission tree, and that Nubia/Sudan becomes a formable.

@Ogele I noticed at grammatical error in the event " 'Abd Allah Modibo challanges Muss III" the response shouldn't be "How dare you challenging me" instead should "How dare you challenge me"
I think the decision doesn't imply that all the gold is given as gifts to European states, but that it simply floods the European market from being dumped there, completely debasing all gold available in Europe.
 
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I feel like maybe that's the point? Maybe they are sacrificing the deep replayability of the game to try to focus more on adding wacky stuff for the few tags they are working on to appeal to the people who only play the game to check out the new DLCs and leave, so that they can have some fun playing around with random stuff like this during their singular playthrough of a new tag?

This event is so bizarre that, frankly, assuming the devs' best intentions I really struggle to come up with a different explaination for this
In some ways I guess pushing this button would be the ultimate troll move in a multiplayer match...

Somebody is rolling on the floor laughing adding these gag buttons.

Whats next, Norwegian shamans being able to summon Jan Mayen?
 
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Mali had nothing to do with triggering the start of the slave trade. It was begun by Arabs, centuries before EU4's time frame. The rise of colonial empires simply opened another market in another direction.
Slave trade is primordial but collapse of central authority did allow for more slave raids to occur both by africans against each other and by Europeans in Guinea, although obvs mali had no influence in Benin and ivory Coast to have possibly prevented it there
 
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I guess this is gg and see you at EUV. I've been a staunch supporter of the continued development of EUIV here on this forum, being outspoken against the need for EUV.

Sub-saharan africa was one of those parts of the world I was looking forward to playing on a brilliant new map which would really catch the history and diversity of africa, considering that africa hasn't felt "done" for generations, putting some mission and events does very little to fix the holistic issue of the underrepresented africa

For me (and I can imagine for a lot of other forumites) this is a massive let down, to me personally this is bigger than the leviathan fiasco as it effectively blocks parts of the world from ever getting a full treatment
 
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Guys, this is just one dev diary about some new decisions and events for Mali and a comment that the EU4 map won't be seeing new provinces. Stop being so dramatic about the game having died because you didn't find what you were hoping for written out here. It might even appear in next weeks dev diary.
 
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if anything i think that final meme button should be expanded a bit (i like the meme even if it's silly):
1. make it per trade node. crashing the economy only in that trade node's gold mine (and maybe require some trade power like 10-20%) and reduce the cost to maybe 3000 or 5000
2. make the final mission unlocks these decisions to dump money in areas instead of catch-all
3. add some way to counter it (maybe only after it happened so cannot be preemptively prevented)
 
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comment that the EU4 map won't be seeing new provinces.

Yeah I guess this it what makes people whiny, as it crushes a lot of the enjoyment we get out of the continued development of the game, and the continued enjoyment as well as many of us having interest in parts of the world that are not well represented lacking in tags and provinces, Africa being one of those places in particular. The current tibet map, another example, will never be fun to play, the current manchuria map being a historic atrocity etc.
 
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It all seemed good but its too op. No gold mine depletion is itself op combining with no inflation and bankrupt ai nations thats is just too op and wont be much fun to play. Plus allow morocco some islamic colonization as in history it planned to do so. But mali part is absolutely anti-flavor. Any player is free to choose exploration but flavor should be thematic

Thanks for the update and Africa do need some love. Please add more monuments

Morocco has missions and events for conquering West Africa and Central America. That has been so since Golden Century.
 
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I guess this is gg and see you at EUV. I've been a staunch supporter of the continued development of EUIV here on this forum, being outspoken against the need for EUV.

Sub-saharan africa was one of those parts of the world I was looking forward to playing on a brilliant new map which would really catch the history and diversity of africa, considering that africa hasn't felt "done" for generations, putting some mission and events does very little to fix the holistic issue of the underrepresented africa

For me (and I can imagine for a lot of other forumites) this is a massive let down, to me personally this is bigger than the leviathan fiasco as it effectively blocks parts of the world from ever getting a full treatment
'I want EUV with West Africa flavour! EU4 getting West Africa flavour is bad!'

1: You REALLY think a vanillia EUV would have more for West Africa than EU4 does now? Really? You think new stuff for West Africa in launch EU4 would take priority over Europe and the Middle East? Or colonial nations? Or even Asia? If you acually think this... please look at reality.

2: Why is it bad a region you apparently want to play in is getting content at all? Surely if you want to play in the region, you should be thankful for something over nothing?

3: Of all the regions in a potential EUV you'd be excited to play first... it's Sub-Saharan Africa? Really? I seriously doubt this.

4: EU4 Development is now handled by the Tinto studio. You realize the main studio could be working on a potential EUV separately? Without effecting the development of this update?

5: An announcement of a West Africa update over EUV is worse than a literally non-functional update launch? You... might want to lower the hyperbole.

It's one thing to say 'I want EUV'. It's another to spew contradictory nonsense to pan an update to EU4 just because it's not EUV.
 
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wonderful, can't wait to see what bugs this new flavor pack introduces and which ones haven't been fixed before you move on to the next bug pack.
 
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We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

Is this plan likely to change? If not I will start making map mods again. Was too much work though when updates came out and I had to change all the province ID's.
 
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Guys, this is just one dev diary about some new decisions and events for Mali and a comment that the EU4 map won't be seeing new provinces. Stop being so dramatic about the game having died because you didn't find what you were hoping for written out here. It might even appear in next weeks dev diary.
I think the reason people are annoyed at this, is because they have already said that they are not gonna release new mechanics. Now they also announced that they are not gonna add new provinces. What are they actually gonna sell in these new content packs? Cosmetics, mission trees and events?
 
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I think the reason people are annoyed at this, is because they have already said that they are not gonna release new mechanics. Now they also announced that they are not gonna add new provinces. What are they actually gonna sell in these new content packs? Cosmetics, mission trees and events?

sounds like it. Can we get a war canoe skin please, thanks
 
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Maybe a better way than having a stupidly powerful event, which in fact does less damage to the player because it would be too strong otherwise, would be targeted attacks with this. Give a powerful Mali with this mission the option of a targeted strike against it's rivals as an espionage action. Imagine, Mali is rivalled with France. In a move to cripple the French economy Mali smuggles literal shiploads of money (At the cost of say several times the yearly income of the target country.) into France, causing the collapse of the French economy, resulting in massive inflation, but also unrest and stability hit, since well, the economy has just kinda collapsed. This would make more sense, is likely more balanced, and would give Mali an unique mechanic.
 
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I think the reason people are annoyed at this, is because they have already said that they are not gonna release new mechanics. Now they also announced that they are not gonna add new provinces. What are they actually gonna sell in these new content packs? Cosmetics, mission trees and events?
Yes the future of EU4 dlc is mods a single person can do over the weekend but instead of being free it costs money.
 
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Paradox keeps saying they are getting better. And uses production efficiency on gold mines and now says they cant add provinces because that would break the save.

Emperor was bad in terms of issues post release. Leviathan was far far worse than that. But this, this is just getting to be too much. This company is just too bald to support. Too lazy to produce actual content. Don't know or care at all about the game. Until paradox starts turning things around im done buying their games and dlcs. Zero hype for vicky 3 either.
 
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